Bertram Pitt, MD: Treating Diabetes, CKD Aggressively with Finerenone

New data presented at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) 2021 Congress this weekend showed finerenone reduced risk of primary composite cardiovascular-related death in patients with type 2 diabetes and chronic kidney disease (CKD).

The findings, presented by study author Bertram Pitt, MD, evidence the promising agent’s benefit in comorbid risk reduction among patients with progressive renal disease. Now, it’s a matter of prescribing clinicians actively treating for such risks.

In an interview with HCPLive during ESC 2021, Pitt explained the ideal treatment window with finerenone: as soon as a patient with diabetes is diagnosed with albuminuria. As he noted, the FIGARO-DKD trial participants generally had diabetes for 12-14 years prior to enrollment.

“They already had a lot of trouble, and we were coming at the end and trying to do something,” Pitt said. “But it’d be much better to come in the beginning. It can’t be good to sit there and have your renal disease progress and tend toward heart failure.”

Pitt also discussed the future assessment of finerenone, as well as its utility in the merging fields of renal, cardiovascular, and metabolic disease management.

“I think we need to be far more aggressive in using these drugs and evaluating them,” he said. “If you don’t evaluate them, then you don’t even know what to do.”